The telecommunications industry is growing rapidly as a result of the expanding need for the transmitting and receiving of greater amounts of information. The industry, in order to meet the needs of the market, has developed a number of technologies that make use of the inherent broadband capabilities of fiber optics. One of these technologies is Wavelength Division Multiplexing, or WDM.
WDM allows many signals to be transmitted simultaneously along a single optical fiber by sending each signal on a different carrier. Each carrier is a light beam of a slightly different wavelength than that of all of the other carriers. In order to combine these individual carrier beams into a single beam at the input of the fiber, an optical multiplexer (MUX) must be employed. To separate the carriers at the receiving end of the fiber, an optical de-multiplexer (DEMUX) must be employed. To be effective and economically practical, a MUX or a DEMUX must be capable of separating a multi-wavelength light beam into its individual wavelength components with a minimum amount of insertion loss and a minimum amount of Polarization Dependent Loss (PDL) and be relatively inexpensive and relatively compact.
The primary function of a DEMUX is to separate the carrier beams by wavelength. There are four basic means of providing this function: (1) thin film filters, (2) arrayed waveguides, (3) fiber Bragg gratings, and (4) diffraction gratings. Thin film filters use multiple filters, each tuned to a different wavelength. Separation occurs at each filter along the light propagation path. This method is effective for systems with a small number of channels (one channel corresponds to one carrier wavelength). For systems with large numbers of channels (e.g., 16 or more) thin film filters are not suitable because the insertion loss is excessive and the overall system becomes too complex.
Arrayed waveguides use an array of different length waveguides. A light beam consisting of multiple carriers, each at a different wavelength, exiting an input fiber is spread out so that it enters all of the waveguides in the array. The wavelength of each carrier in each waveguide, and the length of that waveguide, will determine its phase relative to the light of the same wavelength exiting all of the other waveguides. This phase relationship, in turn, will establish the overall phase distribution of the exiting wavefront for that particular wavelength. That phase distribution will then determine the output port to which this carrier wave will be directed.
Arrayed waveguides are very complex so that large arrays are difficult to make and some means of temperature control is generally required. This complexity places a practical upper limit on the number of channels that can be delivered with arrayed waveguides. Typically, arrayed waveguides also have high insertion loss.
Fiber Bragg gratings are similar to thin film filters except that the filtering is done by a grating created within the fiber. The wavelength selection is done at each grating within the fiber. Fiber Bragg gratings have the same insertion loss problem as thin film filters—the insertion loss becomes excessive for large numbers of channels and, as with thin film filters, the overall system becomes unacceptably complex for a large number of channels.
All three of the above technologies have a relatively high cost per channel as the number of channels increases.
The fourth technology, diffraction gratings, has the potential for both high performance (large number of channels and low insertion loss) and relatively low cost. A diffraction grating may provide separation of a large number of discrete wavelengths by the process of dispersion. An incident beam consisting of multiple carriers of different wavelengths is dispersed by diffraction as the beam is either reflected from the grating or transmitted through the grating. Each wavelength of the exiting beam is reflected or transmitted at a different angle of diffraction so that each carrier can enter a different port. This would be the case for a DEMUX. For a MUX, the separate carriers would be combined into a single beam in a process that is essentially the reverse of that described above for a DEMUX.
The obvious advantage of diffraction gratings over the three other technologies is that a single, relatively simple device may provide the complete wavelength separation function. Therefore, the cost, complexity and size of the MUX or DEMUX will all be less, yet the number of channels will be greater.
There are four types of diffraction gratings but only three are suitable for WDM applications: reflective and transmissive surface relief gratings, and transmissive volume phase gratings (transmissive “VPGs”). Surface relief gratings can have relatively high diffraction efficiencies, but generally only for one polarization. This creates a problem known as Polarization Dependent Loss (“PDL”) in WDM where components of radiation incident on a diffraction grating have different polarizations, since these components will be diffracted by the grating with different diffraction efficiencies. While PDL cannot be eliminated in a surface relief grating, it can be minimized, although only at relatively low grating frequencies (roughly 600 lines per mm or less). This low grating frequency reduces the dispersion of the grating, making it more difficult to insert more channels and get good channel separation.
Transmissive VPGs can also have high diffraction efficiencies but, as in the case of surface relief gratings, this high diffraction efficiency generally occurs only for one polarization. Therefore, a conventional VPG typically exhibits high PDL. While PDL can be minimized in a conventional VPG, doing so either causes the overall diffraction efficiency to be low or the dispersion to be low, resulting in either unacceptably high insertion loss or relatively fewer available channels.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,750,995, issued Jun. 15, 2004, to LeRoy D. Dickson, discloses volume phase gratings (VPGs) configured to maximize both S-polarization diffraction efficiency and P-polarization diffraction efficiency (thereby minimizing insertion loss) and also to minimize polarization dependent loss (PDL). Herein, we will denote as a “Dickson grating” any VPG that is an “E-VPG” grating as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,750,995. We will sometimes denote as a “non-Dickson grating” a VPG that is not a Dickson grating.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,750,995 teaches that the volume phase medium of a Dickson grating can be a hologram composed of dichromated gelatin (“DCG”) having periodically modulated refractive index. However, U.S. Pat. No. 6,750,995 does not teach how to implement a Dickson grating with sufficiently high dispersion (and sufficiently small size and low manufacturing cost) for some applications. A diffraction grating having desirable characteristics of a Dickson grating (minimized PDL, and high diffraction efficiency for both S-polarized and P-polarized radiation) but which can be manufactured (at an acceptably low cost and with sufficiently small size) to have higher dispersion (for both S-polarized and P-polarized components) than can be achieved in accordance with the teachings of U.S. Pat. No. 6,750,995, would be useful in many WDM and other applications.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,602,657, issued Feb. 11, 1997, to LeRoy D. Dickson, et al. discloses a diffraction grating including multiple holographic optical elements (HOEs) held together by a transparent adhesive (e.g., optical cement). Each HOE is a volume phase grating including a volume hologram and a substrate. The multi-HOE grating is designed to diffract a beam including components having different polarizations (e.g., P-polarized and S-polarized components) to produce a desired angular separation between the diffracted components of the diffracted beam. For example, the multi-HOE grating can include a pair of volume phase gratings whose volume holograms have relative orientation such that when the multi-HOE grating diffracts a beam, the angular separation between P-polarized and S-polarized components of the diffracted beam exceeds a predetermined minimum value. However, U.S. Pat. No. 5,602,657 does not disclose how to implement a diffraction grating having high dispersion for both S-polarized and P-polarized components of incident radiation (e.g., incident radiation having a range of wavelengths), minimized PDL, and at least substantially uniformly high diffraction efficiency across a broad wavelength range of incident radiation for both S-polarized and P-polarized components of the incident radiation.